Cultural Sutures: Medicine and Media [Paperback]

Lester D. Friedman (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0822332949 | ISBN-13: 978-0822332947 | Publication Date: May 6, 2004 | Edition: 1

Medicine and the media exist in a unique symbiosis. Increasingly, health-care consumers turn to media sources—from news reports to Web sites to tv shows—for information about diseases, treatments, pharmacology, and important health issues. And just as the media scour the medical terrain for news stories and plot lines, those in the health-care industry use the media to publicize legitimate stories and advance particular agendas. The essays in Cultural Sutures delineate this deeply collaborative process by scrutinizing a broad range of interconnections between medicine and the media in print journalism, advertisements, fiction films, television shows, documentaries, and computer technology.

In this volume, scholars of cinema studies, philosophy, English, sociology, health-care education, women’s studies, bioethics, and other fields demonstrate how the world of medicine engages and permeates the media that surround us. Whether examining the press coverage of the Jack Kevorkian–euthanasia controversy; pondering questions about accessibility, accountability, and professionalism raised by such films as Awakenings, The Doctor, and Lorenzo’s Oil; analyzing the depiction of doctors, patients, and medicine on E.R. and Chicago Hope; or considering the ways in which digital technologies have redefined the medical body, these essays are consistently illuminating and provocative.

Contributors. Arthur Caplan, Tod Chambers, Stephanie Clark-Brown, Marc R. Cohen, Kelly A. Cole, Lucy Fischer, Lester D. Friedman, Joy V. Fuqua, Sander L. Gilman, Norbert Goldfield, Joel Howell, Therese Jones, Timothy Lenoir, Gregory Makoul, Marilyn Chandler McEntyre, Faith McLellan, Jonathan M. Metzl, Christie Milliken, Martin F. Norden, Kirsten Ostherr, Limor Peer, Audrey Shafer, Joseph Turow, Greg VandeKieft, Otto F. Wahl

Editorial Reviews

Review

“This is a book so timely and valuable—even necessary—that the wonder is that it hasn’t already appeared.”—David B. Morris, author of Illness and Culture in the Postmodern Age and The Culture of Pain

About the Author

Lester D. Friedman, Senior Lecturer, teaches film, medical humanities, and literature at Northwestern University. His books include The Jewish Image in American Film; Steven Spielberg: Interviews (coedited with Brent Notbohm); and the British Film Institute book Bonnie and Clyde.

Product Details

• Paperback: 472 pages
• Publisher: Duke University Press Books; 1 edition (May 6, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0822332949
• ISBN-13: 978-0822332947
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #149,893 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Audrey Shafer is an anesthesiologist at the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System and a Professor, Anesthesia at Stanford University School of Medicine. She directs the Arts, Humanities and Medicine Program at the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics (http://bioethics.stanford.edu/arts/).

Originally written for adults, THE MAILBOX is suitable for ages 10 and up. The book offers a sympathetic portrayal of veterans and the burdens they carry throughout their lives, as seen through the eyes of a likable sixth-grader. THE MAILBOX was the 2009 Mountain View Reads Together Book, the 2008 Napa County Reads Book, the 2009-2010 Suburban Mosaic Book of the Year (Cook/Lake County Illinois) and has been on the masterlist for the Black-Eye Susan Award (Maryland), the Sequoyah Award (Oklahoma), the South Carolina Association of School Librarians Junior Book Award, the Great Stone Face Children's Book Award (New Hampshire), the William Allen White Children's Book Award (Kansas), the Virginia Young Readers Program Award, and the Young Hoosier Book Award (Indiana). Additionally, THE MAILBOX has been chosen for Bank Street College Best Children's Books of the Year, Librarians' Choices Booklist, Junior Library Guild Selection, and Read Aloud America Book List.

Children and adults have responded to THE MAILBOX with amazing creativity - constructing mailboxes, writing letters and essays, creating artwork of all genres - and the author is deeply touched and rejuvenated by the spirit and generosity of her readers.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars A superb collection, November 4, 2005

By 

PandoraMAH (Rochester,NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cultural Sutures: Medicine and Media (Paperback)

This collection of wide-ranging and thoughtful essays is a wonderful resource for anyone doing research or teaching in this area. I particularly liked the essay on Margaret Sanger and her short propaganda film career, a valuable contribution to film scholarship and women's history. Friedman has assembled a remarkable group of contributors; this volume is much needed and will not disappoint.